Magnets
by Indubitably Cynical
Summary: Michael and Gretchen meet up after "Art of the Deal." Hate sex ensues.


I wrote this very shortly after the season 3 finale, and it turned into an epic. I decided to publish it here now, even though it's a bit late, but as a one-shot only. Just in case there's anyone out there looking for a gratuitous hate sex fic.

**MAGNETS**

_"Hatred is like a long, dark shadow. Not even the person it falls upon knows where it comes from, in most cases. It's like a two-edged sword. When you cut the other person, you cut yourself. The more violently you hack at the other person, the more violently you hack at yourself. It can often be fatal. But it is not easy to dispose of...It is very dangerous. Once it has taken root in your heart, hatred is the most difficult thing in the world to shake off."_  
--from "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle," by Haruki Murakami

I'm waiting on her couch.

When I hear the key turn in the lock, the violent pounding starts in my temple, the pounding that reminds me just how much I hate her. By now I'm used to the sudden liquid fire that erupts in my veins when I think of her, but this time—knowing what's about to happen, knowing that she has no idea that I'll be here when she opens the door and struts inside, (although maybe she doesn't strut in private,)—this time, I allow myself to finally succumb to the traitorous instinct that has brought me here today without intent to capture or kill. Next time I see her, I'll take care of that. For now, we definitely have unfinished business.

It's icy satisfaction contrasting with fiery hatred when she rounds the corner and jumps at seeing me. I barely even need to look at her to take in what she's wearing. A little black dress showing very subtle cleavage today, and matching pumps that make her about four inches taller than she would be without. But it's not what she's wearing that fans the flames of my anger. It's just her.

"You know, I really don't give you enough credit," she says, relaxing slightly, as though resigning herself to the inevitable. "You can't blame me, though. I mean, your brother—"

"Always the mindless banter," I hear myself growl unfamiliarly, my feet already carrying me to her.

At first she doesn't understand as I draw closer what my intentions are, exactly WHAT inevitability she was resigning herself to. But I see the shift in her eyes, and suspect that she's known as long as I have, maybe longer, that this has to happen. Before either of us can progress any further, there has to be physical closure. Our bodies have been demanding it, as has the violent current of hatred that flows between us.

But pretenses are important. When I grab her face with one of my hands and pull her into a kiss, she lashes out at me and throws me off of her.

"If this is your idea of a curve ball, you've just signed your death sentence," she spits at me, but I've already crossed the bridge, really, and now it's burning behind me. "I deal in sex; I know when I'm being conned."

"We both know this isn't a con," I say plainly, backing her into a wall. "Right?"

She meets my gaze dead-on, which I would admire her for if her unusual eyes didn't already give her an automatic advantage in any staring contest. "Prove it," she challenges, close enough that I can feel her breath wash across my face, smelling like very expensive booze, a smell that goes straight to my cock.

I press against her so she can feel exactly how turned on I am by her proximity. Again to her credit, she doesn't flinch, her eyes don't change. She isn't surprised. "You know exactly why I'm here, you know exactly what we're gonna do. So stop—fucking—around."

Giving her the orders, and feeling her subtle resistance to them, is a brief but acute high that rushes me and forces my hand. Once again, I kiss her, and this time she responds.

As it should be, it's all about offense and defense. Even locked in a hard, angry kiss, we're fighting for every millimeter of ground we can gain. Attack, counterattack, the soldiers are lips, teeth, tongues. Neither of us is going to break for air until the other does, so she luckily thinks of a way to stop without surrendering.

"We are NOT doing this against the wall," she breathes, and her voice has lost its all-powerful seductiveness, now that she's becoming aroused and hungry. "That would be too predictable."

I'm okay with that. She's right, after all. I drag her down to the floor, not particularly caring that I'm probably hurting her. She lets me crawl onto her, but that's about all she's willing to give before she's clutching my hips and doing some kind of a half-rubbing, half-grinding, almost instantly driving me to a point where I can't hold on any longer. She told me she dealt in sex, and now I know it first hand. She has the precision of an expensive whore, without the turn off of having to pay for it.

I'm ready to do this now, I'm certainly hard enough. But she's going to make me wait, because at least for now she has that power. So I use my next weapon; I bury my hands in her thick hair and pull, and she likes it, loves it, maybe, because the moan that escapes her throat is the closest thing to a concession I've seen yet.

Her mouth covers mine again, and we're back to dueling with our tongues. Her hands creep under my shirt and up my chest, while mine leave a trail in the opposite direction, tracing her slim waist and the curve of her hips. When she bites my lip very suddenly and I taste blood, I grind into her once, hard, and I know she can feel every contour of my hardened cock. She gasps into my mouth, I feel her nails on my chest very briefly, and once again she parries my attack with a similar movement of her own, no longer that subtle, slow shimmy but a sharp bucking motion of her hips.

When I pull away to look down at her she's changed completely. I'm used to her aggressiveness, used to her arrogance, but now I'm seeing a raging hunger combined with the same hatred I'm sure must be emanating from me as well. The hatred makes this act just as passionate as if it were love we were feeling for each other. It's the same blinding intensity, the same unbearable burning. Both of us are panting, fueled by this dangerous emotion, needing each other without quite accepting just how much.

There's something almost feline about her when she parts her legs ever so slightly, inviting me in while maintaining enough distance to fool me into thinking she doesn't want it as badly as I do. Not that it would matter in the slightest how badly she wanted it, because I'm taking it regardless.

I undo my belt and hike her dress up around her hips, before I realize that she's about ready to jump me herself if I don't get inside her now. She's so wet, so starving, that I'm in before I can even process it. There's no need to wait for her to adjust. I grab her wrists and pin them above her head, because I don't want her claw marks on my back, and that's the last action I remember consciously controlling.

From then on, we're animals, fucking on the floor and growling and biting and feeding off of one another. But it's not impersonal, it's pretty much the definition of the opposite. The rage has been reduced to its most unadulterated form, a purely biological instinct of simultaneous violence and intimacy. I don't know if I'm punishing her or myself, and I'm almost positive she doesn't either. All either of us knows is that this is MEANT to hurt, it's MEANT to be a brutal, vicious coupling that will leave both of us bruised long after the physical marks have faded.

"I've wanted this, wanted you to fuck me just like this," she gasps as my nails dig into her wrists.

I'm controlled and precise for now, but I can feel that I'm about to lose myself. "I know you did, you fucking cunt."

With each thrust I'm slamming her into the floor, and as I speed up I lose all semblance of a rhythm and just push as hard as I can, as deeply as I can, until the cries coming from her are uncontrollable, her head is thrown back, her neck an irresistible white arch that I vindictively sink my teeth into. Her counterpoint rhythm is also making me insane, forcing me to fuck her even harder. Every muscle in my body struggles to make her scream, and when I'm on the last vestiges of my strength, I bark a command to her. "Open your eyes." I want her to know that I'm the one doing this to her, reducing her to a writhing, moaning bitch in heat.

She does, and even though her eyes are too pale and too glazed in her approaching orgasm for me to see my reflection in them, I still know I'm looking into a fun house mirror, seeing a distorted version of myself inside of her.

Her primal screams when she climaxes, the way her strong muscles clench around me, and the knowledge that she's screaming my name drive me to my own orgasm immediately, and I know her name is somewhere in that incoherent roar that rips from my throat. I feel myself spill into her, letting go and drowning in the all-consuming power of this hatred.

Some idiot once declared that it's a thin line between love and hate. I wouldn't have known until now how untrue that statement is. They are not interchangeable; one cannot cross from love to hate in the blink of an eye, as this thin line would imply. They are as mutually exclusive as they are symbiotic. They are magnets that somehow both attract and repel. They feed off of each other just as they destroy each other. They have nothing and everything in common.

These are the things I'm not contemplating as I slowly shift out of her and pull her dress down to cover her. Meanwhile she tucks me in, buckles my pants, all done very civilly.

For some reason this makes me realize exactly what I've done. I think of my brother, of LJ, Sara, Sofia…and I finally understand the significance of this crime. I understand why, even though my hatred for this woman is so powerful, she in some strange way has completed me for the first time in my life.

For a long moment, as we rise to our feet and stand a reasonable distance away from each other, neither of us looks away. There's a thrill I get from gazing into her eyes and knowing that we're basically anti-soulmates. It's a concept I've never considered, but one that I take great comfort in, especially because it explains the feeling of inevitability that permeates this encounter.

Finally, I move to leave. There really isn't anything to be said, but I look back and say it anyway. "The next time I see you, prepare for a very different kind of encounter."

She smiles, and it's not the evil smile I've seen on her before, but one that tears through me and makes the desire to see her dead all the more powerful. "Funny, I was going to say the same thing."

Of course she was. "Good bye, Gretchen."

But this isn't over. Some instinct, or some vehicle of fate, will drive us together again. I'll have my gun, she'll have hers. One of us will not survive the encounter.

I can't help but wonder what will happen to the one who does.

--

_Feedback appreciated, even if you hated it. And if the idea of these two going at it traumatized you for life, I apologize. I can see where they'd do that to you. _


End file.
